On 01/29/2013 08:45 PM, Larry Garfield wrote: > On 01/29/2013 03:12 PM, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote: >> >>> If I could run my own VM (that much I can do) and periodically just do >>> apt-get update php-head, that would lower the barrier to testing new >>> versions by several orders of magnitude. (Yeah yeah insert RPM vs. Apt >>> debate here; both are good to have.) That would be *sweet*. +1 >> Is building from git really that much harder? Yes, it takes a little bit >> of tweaking to get your configure flags right and getting all the right >> dev versions of the dependencies installed > > And right there in that sentence you've caused the eyes of all but about > 3 people in the entire Drupal developer community to glaze over. That's > my point. As soon as you say "compiler", most PHP dev's brains shut > down. Right or wrong, good or bad, the gulf between PHP developer and C > developer is *huge*, and doing anything at all with the PHP engine, > including building dev releases yourself, is closer to being a C > developer than PHP developer. Even just "I keep a little cn script > around" translates to "what's a cn script, and does it have to do with > the Chinese locale?" for most people. > > If we want more PHP developers helping with internals, even just by > testing things, that is the gulf that needs bridging.
Right, so it takes someone like yourself who speaks their language to figure it out and explain it to them in a way they can understand. I don't know how to explain it any simpler than I just did. You don't have to understand what the commands do, you just need to repeat them. And heck that cn script, even though it is a shell script, could easily be a PHP script. You could even write a little Drupal frontend doodad that kicks off these commands via system(), for example. And a nice graphical config flag generator. It isn't all that different from the Drupal installer. It must do some system calls to copy stuff around, create a config file, etc. That installer is more complicated than this. I also think you are amplifying the ineptness of the average Drupal dev and turning them into a bit of a caricature. I have gone to a number of Drupal conferences and there are smart capable people all over the place. It is all about motivation. They have managed to grasp what to me seems like a very complicated node/field/permission taxonomy in Drupal. My eyes kind of gloss over too when I run across this stuff, but that is mostly because there is really no need for me to understand it. If I needed to understand it better in order to make sure PHP worked better for Drupal, I would. But I don't think this is a good use of my time considering how many projects are out there. I can't learn each one and test each one to the level that people familiar with those projects can. -Rasmus -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
